Cities raise concerns over Southwest LRT deal

A day after the city of Minneapolis and Metropolitan Council announced a pending agreement for the Southwest Light Rail Transit project, officials from other cities along the 16-mile line to Eden Prairie are feeling left out.

Through more than 40 hours of mediated talks with retired Federal Magistrate Judge Arthur Boylan, the city and the Met Council hammered out a design agreement that would scrap the shallow tunnel north of the water channel between Cedar Lake and Lake of the Isles to allow for a station at 21st Street.

Canceling the north tunnel saves about $60 million, half of which will be used to complete other requested improvements for pedestrian access, noise mitigation and landscaping in Minneapolis. The changes would reduce the project budget by $30 million to $1.653 billion.

At a Corridor Management Committee meeting Wednesday, officials from the four other cities along the line raised questions about Minneapolis’ requested improvements making their way into the project’s base budget.

In preparing to grant municipal consent for the project, other cities have made lists of so-called “locally requested capital investments” — items outside the current project scope and budget that cities want completed. Cities can choose to pay for the improvements up front to guarantee implementation or compete for project contingency dollars later if they are available.

Hopkins City Council member Cheryl Youakim said she had a hard time seeing the difference between the “betterments” other cities are requesting like roadway underpasses, grade separations, trail and road extensions and other accessibility improvements and those outlined in Minneapolis’s agreement with the Met Council.

“Some of the things that are being wrapped into municipal consent around the West Lake Station [in Minneapolis] … they sounded like they were betterments and not part of the base budget,” Youakim said.

Jake Spano, a member of the St. Louis Park City Council, asked why the cost savings resulting from changes to his city’s Louisiana Station weren’t redirected to the city for its locally requested capital investments.

“That money goes back into the hopper and everyone gets to compete for it,” Spano said, unlike the savings from the north tunnel in Minneapolis.

Met Council Chair Susan Haigh drew a distinction between the Minneapolis improvements and the items requested by other cities.

“What Minneapolis and the Met Council have agreed to is a series of clear engineering and design improvements that need to be made at station areas,” she said, adding that $30 million is a cap for the improvements in Minneapolis and the changes could cost less. She said the issues addressed in the agreement with the city were similar to discussions other cities had with the project office earlier in the process.

Peter Wagenius, a policy director for Minneapolis Mayor Betsy Hodges, told the committee that the items listed in the agreement were necessary to mitigate co-location of freight and rail in the Kenilworth corridor, which the city was not expecting, and to facilitate development.

Minnetonka Mayor Terry Schneider emphasized that the cities should think regionally about the locally requested capital investments and about how projects that are awarded contingency dollars, if available, can benefit the line as a whole.

The cost savings from crossing changes at Smetana Road in Minnetonka, he said, will go back into the total project budget and the city’s requested improvements – like a possible station near apartments at Smetana Road – will compete for contingency funds.

“We really need to lay out all of these issues in the context of a regional solution, which is not necessarily ‘Well he got his, I want mine too,’” Schneider said.

Hennepin County Commissioner Jan Callison also pointed to the project’s regional importance and the need to quit comparing which cities get what out of the project budget. She said the agreements are a good step forward to keep the project moving toward completion.

Spano and Youakim said they wanted to make sure the playing field is even for contingency funds.

“The issue [we are] raising is one of equity and making sure that everyone is treated fairly in that process and plays by the same rules,” Spano said.

There will be a process for prioritizing locally requested capital investments if contingency dollars are available, Haigh said. She noted there is a long way to go before that stage of the process because the project hasn’t been approved by the Federal Transit Administration yet.

The Corridor Management Committee passed a resolution endorsing the changes, though only the city of Minneapolis and Hennepin County will need to approve the updated municipal consent plans. The municipal consent process for the other four cities remains the same with a deadline of July 14. While the Minnetonka and Hopkins city councils have consented, the St. Louis Park and Eden Prairie councils are scheduled to vote July 14.